POLICE NOTES

June, 1983 - Musician

by Andy Summers

My Brilliant Career

Until I sang "Mother" on the new album, my last vocal effort with the Police was on a song I wrote in 1978 called "Be My Girl." It was about a rubber inflatable doll. In the early days of the Police, we were short on material, so "Be My Girl" was definitely on the song list, sometimes twice a night. I tended to become more self-conscious about doing it for larger and larger audiences. Then one night, in the middle of a performance, I was suddenly clouted over the head by something, only to turn around and find that, unbeknownst to me, the roadies had brought this huge rubber doll up onstage. I used it as a piece of business for the rest of my vocal performance, but that was when I retired from singing with the group.

New Classics

We've changed a bit on the new album. I think a lot of the songs dictated the way they had to be played, as they always should. Some of the tunes have an almost classic feel, songs like "Wrapped Around Your Finger," "Every Breath You Take" - even "Synchronicity." They're in a sort of genre, like classic 50s-type songs. "Every Breath You Take": there's the I-VI-IV-V chord progression, the classic off-beat snare drum sound and echo. It really seemed to go best with the vocal and to create the kind of updated 50s atmosphere we were really looking for, a futuristic 50s sound. It's a very emotional song and it didn't really need anything to distract from the vocal. It needed only very simple dressing.

Sting brought the song into the studio with a synthesizer riff. I thought it was very attractive, but Sting wanted me to make it my own and go out and see what I could come up with to replace it. So I tried to find a riff that would outline the simple chords with a slight difference, with what is almost a classic Police chord, a major chord with an added ninth - you know, an A major with a B added, an F# minor with a G# added, etc. Actually, I cam up with the riff in my kitchen when we were working up stuff for the album I made with Robert Fripp (I Advance Masked). It was influenced by a Bartok piece. I just slowed it down a little and it worked beautifully.

The Wild, the Innocent and the Six-Minute Shuffle

On "Synchronicity," we had a middle section in the song which was to be an instrumental bridge. I already had a riff, a repeat of the introduction riff, but I felt the material should go someplace farther than that and we weren't sure what to do. So I went into the studio; I had on my striped costume and plugged into a 100-watt Marshall with everything at full volume, very loud, very screeching feedback.

There I was. I had my sound, I was really rarin' to go. I was just waiting for the tape to start and Hugh (Padgham) the engineer indicated for me to go ahead. Sometimes, when we record feedback stuff, I'll start playing and nod at him and he'll roll the track and drop me in wherever.

This time I wasn't hearing the track in the headphones but I thought I was being recorded anyway. I could see we had the tape going, so I stood there for five or six minutes with this throbbing monster, and I'm screeching, doing all kinds of feedback variations. Finally, I just assumed the track was over - Christ, it was only two or three minutes long - and put down my guitar and went into the control room. Everyone was standing there with their eyes just bulging. They had recorded me all through but hadn't put the track with it, so all we got was this incredible six minutes of convolutions. We would up using it for the middle of "Synchronicity II."

Motherfreaker

The riff from my song "Mother" on the new album was originally in 4/4 time; it was another little thing I did in my kitchen, based on three different Arabic scales. But it certainly was rather compelling. Then I played around with it a bit and took it into 7/4 and then it really seemed to work.

At the time of writing this, I haven't prepared a story for my own dear mother, who I'm sure is going to be quite shocked and hurt when she finally gets to hear the song. But of course, she'll misinterpret it anyway, because it's not...this is a song for all men everywhere, not my poor old dear mom.

The Ghost vs. the Machine

I used to have a whole studio at home, a 16-track recorder and desk, a remote, everything. But what I found was that with the lifestyle and limited amount of time I have, I didn't want to take that much time for the process of creating music. I've found that I actually get the most done with a two-step process. First I'll sit down in my kitchen, which has wonderful acoustics, and play my acoustic guitar into a small cassette recorded in a sort of stream of consciousness flow. I note all these ideas down in a book and give them all numbers. Then the best ideas I'll pull out and work on my TASCAM 244 Portastudio using drum machines, electric guitar, synthesizer and bass. All I want to think about is the music and not the recording itself, which is why I sold all the 16-track stuff. I learned the hard way - it cost me a lot of money.

I think Stewart is more geared towards twiddling knobs and spending time like that. Sting is exactly like me. He doesn't like to use a big formal system. We both just work out on Portastudios and then go to a studio to make better demos, where the engineer can spend all the time. I find it a clearer and easier way to think.

The Mouth That Snored

Last year, we would work twelve-hour days in the studio, and most of the creative stuff occurred after dinner, when we'd be loose after playing all day. The roadies - we call them the three wise men - would generally fall asleep on the couch in front of the desk. When people would fall asleep, then they would be taken to the party, as we called it. In other words, you'd pile all kinds of things on top of them - cigarette packets, candy wrappers, beer bottles, anything - and then take their photograph or wait till they woke up just covered with all kinds of garbage they would have to scrape off. This year, we started taping people down, like mummies, so they couldn't get up.

This one guy, Tam, has an incredible snore, and one night he nodded out and began to snore. We finally were just sitting there all snickering and giggling at this incredibly loud snore. Then we all got the same idea at once: we set up a mike right over his nose and put it into a flanger and a huge, deep echo and recorded it, putting it up terrifically loud. It was so loud, ear-shatteringly loud, that it finally woke him up.

Later we slowed it down on tape, and got a really beautiful sound, just like the Loch Ness monster. I'm sure it can be put to good use somewhere. Afterwards, anybody who would attempt an overdub would eventually come to the end of playing or singing their part and say, "Well, how was that?" And there would be complete silence in the control room, and then the sound of loud snoring would fill the studio.

Soundcheck Magic

For a while now, we've been hoping to record a complete album of 50s songs, all the classics: "Summertime Blues," "Peggy Sue," "High Heeled Sneakers," Elvis stuff...You know, what you get in your teenage years, you just to on in a sense repeating for the rest of your life. It's really at the soundchecks that we get to play almost everything we know. Sting likes to do "Respect" a lot. We just play anything: rockabilly, Jimmy Smith stuff, R&B, jazz....We get into James Blood Ulmer, a lot of funk...and we'll also play some very far-out stuff as well sometimes. The soundchecks are fantastic - we really blow people away. When you're on a long tour and are playing the same tunes night after night, the soundcheck becomes very fresh. It's an important time in the day to try things out. Often nothing is ever said; we just get down and play, but we know what we're doing and things occur. And this is where the band is growing, hopefully.

The Future

I think most of the three of us always want to keep it at the barest, the bare bones. I like the three-piece sound. I think that's the classic Police sound. But I'm aware at the same time that it must grow and that one can't drag one's feet in the mud. Things have to move on. It's sometimes necessary to force change.

The Wobbling Cloud

Onstage I've been using the same set-up for about the last three years, which is two reworked, souped-up Marshall 100-watt tops, two 4x12 cabinets, (I'm not sure what the speakers are because my faithful roadie changes them all the time). I use them at about half-volume, with not a lot of presence. I also record occasionally with a Bolt amp. I also have a Peter Cornish custom-made pedalboard which contains an MXR Phase 90, an MXR analog delay, a Mutron III envelope follower, a fuzz, an Electro-Harmonix flanger and a Dyna-Comp compressor. I carry two echoplexes on tour, both of which are about fifteen years old. I combine the analog delay and the echoplex to get some double rhythm effects. The board has a master effects on and off button, so you can pre-program effects together without having any effects on, then just hit one button and have them all come on together.

I use a '63 sunburst Telecaster Custom, which has a Gibson pickup on it, and an overdrive pot installed in it, and I use a '61 Strat, a Hamer, and the Roland guitar synthesizer. I have the GR-303 guitar synthesizer, which I like better than the 808 guitar. I recently got a Gibson Chet Atkins electric classical guitar and used it on the new album. On Ghost In The Machine I used a Gibson 335, a Les Paul and Strat most of the time. The 335 has a slightly warmer sound. On some pieces I started to get a good sound with a compressor.

I'm gradually using heavier and heavier gauge strings all the time, probably because I spend a lot of time practicing on acoustic guitar, and electric guitar is just too light for me. I've gone over to using Dean Markley strings at the moment. The sizes are .010, .013, .017, .026, .036 and .048.

Copyright © 1983 By Musician. All Rights Reserved.


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